Why No One Talks About Arches (But Should!)
Most people don’t give their foot arches a second thought, until they’re injured. Whether it’s shin splints, plantar fasciitis, or that dull ache that creeps in after a long day, the feet often get ignored until they start shouting.
I know, because I did exactly that. For years, I battled on-and-off plantar fasciitis, convinced it was just part of being active. I used to walk sideways down the stairs in the morning like a crab. It wasn’t until I learned how to actually strengthen the arches, not just stretch or ice them, that everything changed. No gadgets, no orthotics, no magic tape, just solid, sensible foot work.
This blog isn’t about making you paranoid about your feet. It’s about showing you the real power in your arches—and how building them up can help prevent some of the most common overuse injuries around.
Secret #1: Your Arches Are Built-In Shock Absorbers
Your arches are meant to absorb shock, like natural suspension for your body. Every step sends force up through your feet, and the arches are supposed to handle the bulk of that pressure before it travels higher. When they can’t, something else takes the hit.
Usually, it’s your knees, hips, or lower back.
I learned that the hard way. After a car accident, I started getting nagging sacroiliac joint pain that just wouldn’t shift. For years, I treated it like a back problem. But it wasn’t until I noticed that I was walking with a slight turnout on my right side that things started to make sense. That tiny change in foot position was sending everything out of alignment.
Here’s what was really happening: when your foot turns out, the arch often collapses inwards (called pronation), which causes the knee to roll medially and the pelvis to rotate. That creates a shearing force across the sacroiliac joint and a torque pattern through the lumbar spine. The body is trying to stay upright, but the alignment is off. Over time, that repeated imbalance creates strain, compensation, and eventually pain.
This matters for everyone, but it’s especially important for runners. With every stride, the impact through your foot can be up to three times your body weight. If your arches aren't absorbing that force efficiently, you're sending all that load straight into your joints, over and over again. That’s a fast-track route to overuse injuries, even with good shoes.
When I corrected the way I walked, realigning from the feet up, the SI joint pain disappeared completely. It wasn’t my back that was the problem. It was the way my arches were loading and the ripple effect that caused.
Your arches aren’t just about your feet. They’re your foundation. When they do their job well, the rest of your body doesn’t have to overcompensate.
Secret #2: Arch Strength Is More Important Than Arch Shape
People get caught up in labels: flat feet, high arches, neutral arches, as if the shape of your foot tells the whole story. It doesn’t. The real question is: can your arches do their job?
You can have a perfectly shaped arch that’s completely dysfunctional. Equally, someone with a low-looking arch might have incredible strength and control through their foot. It’s not about the height of the arch, it’s about whether it can load, lift, and stabilise you as you move.
Arch strength isn’t just about pushing off when you walk or run. It’s what helps you balance on one leg, stabilise during a squat, stay upright on uneven ground, and avoid collapsing through your knees and hips. When the arch can’t activate, everything above it starts working overtime.
Walking with a natural turnout (feet pointing slightly outwards) might seem harmless, but over time it alters the way your arches load. That turnout can flatten the medial arch, overstretch the supportive structures, and weaken the muscles that are meant to lift and stabilise. It doesn’t just affect how your foot looks—it changes how it functions and how strong it feels. And the longer it goes uncorrected, the harder the body has to work to compensate.
I often see this in clients who come in with knee pain or hip tightness. They’ve tried foam rollers, stretches, even glute work—but their feet have been left out of the conversation. Once we start doing foot drills and reawakening the arch muscles, they’re shocked at how quickly things change. It’s like plugging a cable back into the socket—they reconnect, and suddenly the system works again.
So if you’ve been told you’ve got “flat feet” or “overpronation,” don’t panic. What matters more is whether your feet are strong, switched on, and able to support you properly. That’s something you can train—no matter what your natural foot shape looks like.
Secret #3: Most People Have 'Lazy' Arches Without Knowing It
We’ve all heard of lazy glutes—but no one talks about lazy arches. Yet the truth is, most people walk around every day with underactive feet. The muscles that are meant to support the arch just aren’t firing properly, and over time, the foot stops doing its job.
Modern life doesn’t help. We spend too much time in cushioned shoes on flat floors. Our feet don’t get the sensory input or the physical challenge they need to stay strong. They become passive passengers, not active participants in movement.
Here’s the thing: your arch isn’t a fixed structure. It’s a dynamic, responsive system made up of muscles, fascia, ligaments, and nerves. And when it’s not being used? It gets weaker. Think “use it or lose it”—that absolutely applies here.
But it’s not just the foot that suffers. Weak, inactive arches disrupt the entire kinetic chain—especially the glutes. The truth is, the arch loses its shape when the glutes and deep stabilisers aren't pulling their weight—often from too much sitting, poor posture, or lack of movement variety. The feet and the glutes are sole mates. They rely on each other to fire, stabilise, and absorb load. When one checks out, the other ends up doing too much—or not enough—and that’s when dysfunction creeps in.
Most people don’t realise their arches have switched off until they start waking them up again. I see it all the time in Pilates. We’ll do a few foot drills—like toe spreads or short foot work—and suddenly there’s this spark of recognition. Clients feel muscles they didn’t know they had. Their balance improves. Their whole foot shape starts to change. It’s not dramatic—it’s just a quiet switch being flicked back on.
And once that switch is on, everything above it starts working better too.
Secret #4: Strong Arches Can Change the Way You Walk, Stand, and Move
When your arches are strong, everything about the way you move changes. You walk differently. You stand more evenly. You feel more grounded, more stable, and more switched on in your whole body.
That might sound dramatic, but I see it all the time. Clients come to me with back pain, tight hips, or balance issues, and once we start reconnecting the foot-to-core pathway, their whole movement quality improves. They move with more awareness. Their alignment improves without even thinking about it. Why? Because they’re finally being supported from the ground up.
Strong arches do more than just stop you rolling in. They improve your weight distribution, reduce your reliance on compensations, and help you stand in better postural alignment. That takes pressure off your knees, hips, and spine. Your muscles don’t have to overwork just to keep you upright.
It’s like rebuilding your foundations. Once they’re solid, everything above has a better chance of working properly.
You don’t need perfect feet, you need functional feet. And strong, responsive arches are the key to unlocking how your body moves every single day.
Secret #5: Your Arches Are the Foundation for Long-Term Injury Prevention
If you’ve had the same injury creep back again and again, plantar fasciitis, shin splints, ITB irritation, back tweaks that never fully settle, it’s time to look at your foundations.
Because even if the pain isn’t in your feet, the root cause often is.
Your arches are the first line of defence against poor movement mechanics. When they’re strong and working well, they help distribute force, stabilise your body, and reduce unnecessary stress on your joints. But when they’re weak or disconnected, your body finds a workaround. And that workaround usually leads to repetitive strain somewhere else.
Take the iliotibial band (ITB), for example. It’s not a muscle or a tendon, it’s a thick band of fascia that runs down the outside of the thigh. It acts like a tension cable, helping to stabilise the knee and hip, and it transmits force from muscles like the gluteus maximus and tensor fasciae latae. But when your feet aren’t absorbing shock properly, the ITB can end up under excess strain, especially during walking, running, or cycling. That irritation is often a downstream symptom of what’s going wrong further down.
The problem is, most recovery plans skip over the feet entirely. You’re told to stretch, rest, roll, ice… and while that might help in the short term, it won’t prevent the next flare-up.
True prevention doesn’t come from treatment, it comes from building resilience. That starts from the feet up.
In my own experience, and with the hundreds of clients I’ve worked with, there’s one common thread: when we strengthen the arches and reintroduce proper load through the feet, the body finds a new rhythm. Old pain patterns fade. Stability increases. Injuries stop repeating themselves.
If you want to stay active, mobile, and injury-free long term, you can’t afford to ignore the base. It’s not a quick fix, but it’s the most sustainable one you’ve got.
Secret #6: Client Wins – What Happens When Arches Switch Back On
This isn’t just theory, it works in real bodies. I’ve seen it over and over again: clients walk in with knee pain, tight hips, balance issues, or recurring foot problems. They’ve tried stretching, orthotics, rolling, even injections. But no one’s ever looked at the foundation: their arches.
Once we start switching the feet back on, really waking them up, rebuilding the connection to the ground, everything starts to shift.
Clients often say things like:
“My balance is so much better, I don’t feel like I’m going to fall over when I stand on one leg anymore.”
“My back doesn’t ache after long walks now.”
“I didn’t realise how much I was gripping with my toes until I stopped needing to.”
I’ve had clients who were convinced they just had “bad knees” or a “weak core.” What they actually had was disconnected feet. When we brought the arches back online, their posture improved. Their glutes fired properly. They felt stronger, not just in the feet, but through their whole system.
One client who’d been managing plantar fasciitis for years noticed a real shift after just two weeks of short foot drills and barefoot balance work. The pain wasn’t gone, but the intensity had eased, and she could stand in the kitchen for longer without constantly shifting her weight.
It’s never just about the feet, but the feet are so often the missing piece. When you reconnect that base, the results travel upward, and outward.
Secret #7: A Few Simple Drills Can Wake Up Your Feet
You don’t need fancy kit or a physio degree to start rebuilding your arch strength. You just need a bit of focus and consistency. These drills might look simple, but when done with attention, they’re incredibly effective.
The goal isn’t to blast your feet into submission. It’s to reconnect. Wake up the muscles that have switched off. Teach your brain to notice what your feet are doing again. That’s where strength and stability begin.
Here are a few go-to favourites I use with clients (and do myself):
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Toe Spreads & Lifts
Try lifting your big toe while keeping the others down. Then reverse it. Then spread all the toes wide like piano keys. It’s surprisingly tricky at first, because we’ve lost that fine control. But it kicks the foot-brain connection back into gear fast. -
Short Foot Exercise
This one’s subtle. Think about drawing the ball of the foot toward the heel, without scrunching your toes. It strengthens the deeper muscles that support your arch and improves stability through the whole leg. -
Calf Raises
Slowly lift and lower your heels off the floor, maintaining control. Ensure you keep your body weight on your big and second toe, to prevent rolling out on the other 3 toes and creating instability at your ankle. -
Barefoot Balance Work
Start by standing on one foot without shoes on, without holding on to anything, then try doing this on a thicker carpet, or a rolled up towel, this builds strength without you even realising it.
You don’t need to do them all. Two or three, done daily for a few minutes, is more than enough to start waking up your foundation.
Because when your feet are awake, the rest of your body doesn’t have to work so hard to hold you up.
Conclusion: Start From the Foundation
Strong, functional arches won’t just change your feet, they’ll change the way your whole body moves. Whether you’re dealing with recurring pain, nagging imbalances, or just want to future-proof your body, the answer often lies in what’s happening below the ankle.
Reconnecting with your feet is about more than strength, it’s about awareness. It’s about understanding how your body is designed to move and giving it the tools to do that with ease again. For too long, we’ve treated the feet as an afterthought, relying on external support instead of building internal strength.
When you wake up the arches, you start to feel things differently. You move differently. Your posture changes without thinking. Your balance improves without effort. That sense of being “off” begins to shift, not through correction, but through connection.
So if something in your body isn’t quite right, start at the foundation. Strengthen your base, reawaken what’s gone quiet, and give your body the support it’s been missing.
Because real, lasting change always starts… from the feet up.
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